Note of the Week

Establishing a Successful Meditation Practice

Meditation has been proven to aid in reducing stress, anxiety and insomnia, and is a wonderful tool to increase mental and emotional well-being, clarity, and overall peace of mind. However – much like any health or wellness practice – the greatest benefits come when we're able to truly make it a part of our everyday lives, rather than something set aside for “when we have some free time.” For most beginners, one of the greatest challenges to learning meditation lies simply in the discipline of doing it every day. With that in mind, here are a few tips that may help in establishing a successful routine. 1) Treat it like any other health or fitness practice. You wouldn't go to the gym or go for a run once every few months and expect to get much out of it. Same goes for meditation – the benefits are there to be had, but you likely won't get the best results until it's a regular part of your week.

2) Have realistic expectations when starting out. One of the most common things I hear from new students is that they'd like to meditate, but they “can't sit still for 5 minutes.” To which I always respond: of course you can't, that's why you need to learn how to meditate! If you haven't lifted weights since high school P.E., odds are you're not going to be able to bench-press your body weight right away. If you've never taken a yoga class before, you probably won't be able to put legs behind your head after the first day. So if you're not all “totally Zen” after your first few meditation sessions, that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. 3) It is a “practice.” We often refer to regular routines as “practices” without reflecting on what that word really means. Too often when learning a new skill or trying to establish a habit we have a picture in our heads of what that skill or habit is supposed to look like, and then get discouraged when we find our initial actions producing results that inevitably fall short. Understand that inherent in learning anything new there's going to be a learning curve where at first we're just not very good – but if you practice, you will get better.

4) You might benefit from a class or personal trainer :) Like with yoga or exercise routines, there are many helpful books, videos, and online resources for learning and practicing meditation. However, just like with yoga or exercise, most people get the best results and can greatly speed up the learning curve when they have outside help.

Caught in a Technology Loop?

Email, Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, Netflix, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Words with Friends.... There is no shortage these days of distractions, and if you're anything like me, you find yourself constantly checking updates and notifications on your smartphone, how many "likes" you got on your latest Facebook post, the latest Top Ten Wacky Tattoo Fails, etc. etc. And while there's nothing wrong with any of these things in and of themselves, it's when we can't seem to disengage from them that they start to clog up our time and detract from our quality of life (as a variation on an old aphorism: No one on their death bed ever wished they spent more time looking at Reddit threads). So what to do about it? Here are a few simple actions you might try to put into practice this week:

1) Turn off all non-essential notifications on your phone. For most of our jobs, knowing when an important email coming in is an absolute necessity. But someone commenting on a Facebook post, or sharing a Tweet, or seeing that someone has looked at a Snapchat photo is far from mandatory. Try turning off all the extra notifications and see what effect that alone can have.

2) Set aside "Technology Time." As an extension of the first suggestion, turning off your notifications won't do you much good if you're still constantly checking your social media for updates anyway. Set aside a block of time specifically for these things - 20 minutes, 30, 40, whatever seems reasonable, just like you might set aside a non-interrupted block of time for an episode of "The Walking Dead" or "Game of Thrones." Then, go ahead and enjoy it guilt-free.

3) Put your phone away when walking or driving. This is a minor yet effective way to decrease your time in the virtual world and increase you presence in the real one. When you drive, stay present with the driving. When you walk, use the time to actually take in your surroundings. Speaking of which...

4) Use Southern California to your advantage. Take it from someone who grew up in Chicago - we're pretty lucky to live where we do. See if you can set aside 5 minutes a day just to sit and stare. Stare at the trees, stare at the clouds and the blue sky, stare at a body of water or a bed of flowers. You'd be surprised at what taking just 5 minutes to do absolutely nothing can do for you.

5) Practice the art of waiting. The modern world provides no end of opportunities to practice mindfulness (and, again, it is a practice. We get better and better the more we do it). The next time you find yourself waiting for an appointment, in an elevator, standing in line at the grocery store, try to resist the temptation to pull out your smart phone or planner. Instead, practice just being present for a few minutes by checking in with your physical senses: What do you see around you? Hear? Smell? If you're drinking coffee - really taste the coffee. How does your body feel as it sits or stands, the clothes against your skin? Observe your breath. Again, just a couple of minutes here and there when done daily can have an amazing cumulative effect.